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Referendum on City Garden Project to go ahead

Aberdeen city councillors have voted to hold a referendum as a means of gauging the level of public support for the proposed City Garden Project.

At today’s meeting of Full Council a successful motion was put forward by Councillor Kate Dean and proposed that the Council:

• (a) agrees to hold a public referendum, in accordance with section 5.7(i) – (xxi) of the previous Enterprise, Planning and Infrastructure report, which must not prejudice the Council’s future planning and fiduciary responsibilities;

• (b) agrees recommendations 2(i), (ii) and (iii) of the report tabled at Full Council by the Chief Executive;

• (c) instructs officers to continue all efforts to obtain the balance of the required funding from any other available source;

• (d) allocates up to £50,000 from the Council’s contingency budget to meet the costs not covered by (b) and (c) above;

• (e) agrees that the referendum question be as printed in the draft Notice of Referendum in the report tabled by the Chief Executive.

The recommendations of the report by the Chief Executive were:

• to accept the offer made by Sir Ian Wood on behalf of the Wood Family Trust of 80% of the costs of the referendum up to a total of £200,000 payable by the Trust, subject to the terms of the offer to the Council being agreed by the Head of Legal and Democratic Services;

• to agree the appointment of Crawford Langley as independent Counting Officer responsible for the delivery of the referendum; and

• to note the draft Notice of Referendum to be published as soon as possible following the Council’s decision on a referendum.

The draft Notice of Referendum, presented to councillors today, proposes that the referendum be held on Thursday 01 March 2012 and the question worded:

You are being asked to choose between retaining Union Terrace Gardens or replacing them with the proposed City Garden Project design.

Which option do you support?

Retaining Union Terrace Gardens

The City Garden Project Design

The draft Notice of Referendum also proposes that the referendum will be conducted on an all postal basis. Voting packs are expected to be issued around Thursday 16 February 2012. A facility to vote electronically might be available and if this is the case the relevant information will be included in the voting pack. Those entitled to vote at the referendum will be those listed in the Electoral Register as Local Government electors at a qualifying address within the City of Aberdeen and will have attained the age of 18 on or before 30 November 2012.

Councillors voted 26-13 in favour of Cllr Dean’s motion. One member abstained.

Cllr Dean said: “What this aims to do is gauge public opinion and to try to gague it accurately and clearly. The question in the referendum should be as straight forward as possible so it can be as unambiguous as possible.”

A motion to produce a report on the feasibility of holding a referendum was first tabled by Aberdeen Central MSP and city councillor Kevin Stewart and backed by councillors in September this year.

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